


Little Wounds

by Nova_Cain



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Keith gets a nose scar in battle, M/M, PINING KEITH, Post Blackout, Shiro's still missing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 17:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12113715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nova_Cain/pseuds/Nova_Cain
Summary: Bonding moment as Coran treats Keith's wounds -- the physical and the emotional.





	Little Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> keith-and-shiro-were-dating on tumblr posts some great ideas. I saw "Keith getting a nose scar in battle" and I just couldn't NOT write this out.

Keith sat with his back against the console, watching silently as his team healed in their separate pods. Allura had left the room first, after realizing that she wasn’t going to change Keith’s mind about opting out of using a healing pod.

Instead, he let Coran perform “primitive medicinal practices” on him; setting the bone in his right arm that broke from the impact of a Galra sentinel, gently rubbing salves along the skin above his bruised ribcage, cleaning debris from the tiny scratches on his cheeks that his helmet couldn’t protect him from, things like that. It’s what Keith had been used to back on Earth anyway, so he didn’t mind.

Not when it meant he might be able to keep a constant reminder of Shiro on his person. So when Coran had moved to place some of that pungent salve on the large cut that ran across Keith’s nose, he grabbed Coran’s hand to stop him.

“It’ll quicken the healing process. You’ll look like your old self again in no time,” Coran said. He smiled at Keith, but his eyes didn’t hold the same feigned cheerfulness as his voice.

“I don’t want it.” Keith gently pushed Coran’s hand away. Coran’s mustache twitched as he pinched off whatever else he wanted to tell the young Earthling.

“Let me clean it at least.” Coran spoke gently, but his words allowed for no further disagreement as he picked up a different bottle. He pressed a fresh bandage against its nozzle, let it soak up the lightly perfumed liquid, and then moved to place the bandage against Keith’s nose. The young man remained perfectly still, blinking away tears that welled up despite himself as Coran’s medicines worked to clean the wound.

Coran lightly brushed Keith’s bangs from his face under the pretense of checking for any hidden cuts, his gloved fingers ghosting across Keith’s forehead in a fatherly caress. It lasted only for a moment, but that didn’t stop the tears from slipping down Keith’s cheeks. Coran brushed them away with his thumbs, turning the motions into light presses against Keith’s cheeks to check the stability of Keith’s bandages. When he was satisfied with his handiwork and Keith’s eyes finally dried, Coran let go of his face and moved away.

As Coran packed away his medicinal tools, he almost missed Keith’s next words, spoken so quietly they barely registered over the steady hum of the Castleship.

“Will it scar?”

Coran turned toward Keith, who had his eyes fixed on Pidge’s pod. The smallest paladin’s face was twitching incessantly with pain, but Coran pushed his concern for her aside. A few Earth hours in the pod would take care of her concussion and she’d have her full mental faculties working like nothing had ever happened.

He was more concerned with the emotional vulnerability he just discovered in the young man next to him.

Coran pinched the end of his mustache and pulled, weighing his options. He wanted more than anything to talk to Keith about what he was feeling, to address the emotional pain that he knew no healing pod or smelly salve could soothe…. but one look at the hunched figure beside him stayed that impulse. He would address what wounds he was allowed to help with, even if it could only be scraped cheeks and bruises. He would take whatever opportunities to support Keith that he had, even if they demanded his total silence.

“Yes. It won’t get infected, but the scar will be there.”

“Good.” Keith inhaled deeply, and when he spoke again, he sounded more like his old self again. “If I go in there… it would take it away from me.”

Coran didn’t need any more explanation to understand Keith’s meaning.

The pod would take this phantom piece of Shiro from him.

_Just like everything else did._

This was a wound Keith preferred to suffer through consciously. It was a pain he would rather live through and feel in its entirety, to be constantly reminded that it was real. That he was real. Every time he looked in the mirror, he would know with absolute certainty that Shiro was out there somewhere.

That they would see each other again, no matter how long he had to wait.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's about it! I love writing tender bonding moments with Coran, I feel like he needs more love in this fandom.


End file.
